


muscle memory

by owlinaminor



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Music, angst but it gets better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 05:06:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13474299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: Barry never remembers his dreams.But he wakes up with fragments, sometimes.  Especially in this life, this trial, when he plays nights at a tavern to fund his research into necromantic arts.  He wakes with a slow melody, snatches of red, and the figure of a tall, beautiful woman who always turns away just before he can see her face.





	muscle memory

**Author's Note:**

> dear [binch-queen](http://binch-queen.tumblr.com/): i apologize for the lateness of this candlenights exchange gift, and also the sadness at the beginning. i hope you like it anyway.
> 
> this fic is inspired partially by my postmodernism prof's commentary on how music is a deconstructed form of language, partially by [perfect song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFtjn4xOgOI) by enter the haggis, and partially by [that one parks and rec scene](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CRyt2w5UcAACCSp.jpg). the song referenced is, of course, salut d'amour by edward elgar.
> 
> this is unbeta'd, but abby (my roommate, who finished taz balance today!), did listen to me read it aloud and provide commentary. thanks, abby! i love you, abby!

 

 

> _Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances._
> 
> _– "Meditation at Lagunitas," Robert Hass_

 

 

Barry wakes up, and he is alone.

His surroundings fade in slowly, as though a mist is lifting.  But there is no mist, at least not outside his body – there is only a tank, cool and smooth; walls of a cave, dark and rough; a pair of jeans and white T-shirt, laid gently on the back of a chair; a desk piled high with books; a low, blue light echoing from an entrance somewhere to his left.  He sits up slowly, limbs oddly heavy, as though he hasn’t moved them in a very long time.

His limbs are too heavy, yet he feels hollow.  A tree with only one ring of bark, no substance.  Something is missing.  Someone is missing.

Barry places a hand on his chest.  His fingers are cold, pruned from the fluid of the tank, but he presses – presses until he can feel a pulse, going slow and steady, the beat beneath a sad blues tune.

Next to the pile of books on the desk, a coin gleams, shiny and gold.

 

 

Barry never remembers his dreams.

He knows he has them.  He wakes sweaty in his bedroll, blanket pushed back and arms clenched at his sides, muscles primed for a fight.  He joins an adventuring party and does not protest when they insist he sleep in a different room whenever possible.  He does not ask for details when they tell him he shouts, cries, barks commands in a language they don’t recognize.

Barry never remembers his dreams, but he wakes with a melody in his head, sometimes.  A duet, he thinks.  Two instruments.  He can never quite pull out the names of the instruments, but they remain just beneath his tongue, pulsing like a second heartbeat.

And then one night, the adventuring party stops in a tavern, flush with gold from a mission they’d just pulled off defending a village from visiting raiders.  Most of the party heads straight for the bar, but Barry is drawn – simply and inexplicably as gravity – to the piano pushed up against one wall.

There’s an old dwarven woman sitting at the bench, gnarled fingers tapping out a ragtime dance.  Barry waits until it reaches its coda, his hands faintly shaking, then asks if he could give it a go.

“Sure, why not,” the woman replies.  “I could use a break.”  She offers up her seat with a nod, warns him that the top two octaves are out of tune and the pedal doesn’t work.  Barry barely answers – only sits, raises his fingers.

He breathes in, and the music flows out.  He could’ve sworn that he’s never sat at a piano before in his life, and yet here he is, running through quiet chords and moving melodies as easily as putting one foot in front of the other.

It’s a beautiful piece.  Everyone in the tavern says so, after Barry stands up, his hands still shaking.  He nods and smiles as politely as he can and doesn’t mention the second voice he heard in his mind as he played – the one called _violin._

 

Barry wakes up, and he is alone.

Floats back from the base of the cliff, loses a moment in screaming – he was so _close_ that time, he survived so _long,_ he learned so _much –_ he was even close to remembering _her –_

He starts the journey back to his cave, watches the sky fade from blue to red to purple to twinkling stars.  He was so close.  He remembers sitting in a tavern, fingers working through a melody for which his mind had no name.

Lucretia erased everything.  Barry knows this by now, has had enough rounds of trial and error to narrate his history and have it shadowed by static once he wakes up human.  But her methods must be imperfect – she wrote only words, drew only pictures.  It seems audio memory and muscle memory still remain even when all the context for them has been deleted.  Barry aches to write this down, to experiment, to grab a giant chalkboard and start to work out precisely how the voidfish’s power functions – but of the two people he would most want to conduct those experiments with, one is missing and the other his sworn enemy.

When Barry makes it back to his cave, the sun is just rising over the horizon, and he has run through the duet in his mind fifty-six times.

 

 

Barry wakes up, and he is cold.

He doesn’t recognize this cave – the dark walls, the desk piled with books, the little wooden chair with his jeans draped over the back.  His limbs are unfamiliar as he lifts them – too heavy, yet at the same time not heavy enough.  His chest is hollow.

Next to the pile of books on the desk, a coin gleams, shiny and gold.  Barry picks it up, spins it once, twice.  A melody begins to play.  Barry knows this melody – can’t remember the name or where he’s heard it, but he knows the give and take of the waltz, knows when the right hand will wander up high and when the left hand will drop low, knows when to expect crescendo and decrescendo.  His fingers begin drumming on his leg, tracing out the patterns of the pianist’s right hand.  And he begins to hear a counterpoint – a second melody, higher and filled with vibrato, soaring over the piano.  It takes him half the piece to realize that second melody is not from the recording but from his mind.

“You know this song,” a voice says – his own.  “You have played it a thousand times.  You helped to write it.  You know each note, each dynamic marking.  And you know that this is only half of a duet – the other half is played by a person you love more than any other in the universe.  You will find her, and you will play this with her again.”

Barry puts a hand up to his cheek, and his finger comes away damp with tears.

 

 

Barry never remembers his dreams.

But he wakes up with fragments, sometimes.  Especially in this life, this trial, when he plays nights at a tavern to fund his research into necromantic arts.  He wakes with a slow melody, snatches of red, and the figure of a tall, beautiful woman who always turns away just before he can see her face.

 

 

Barry wakes up, and he is not alone.

Of course, he has been awake in some sense for hours now – since a cave in the mountains, a golden coin, a pair of blue jeans, a trio of adventurers who greeted him like an old friend.  But he was not truly awake.  He was a half-self, a shadow given weight and definition, a melody without its counterpoint.

Now the mist lifts – truly lifts – lifts him until his limbs are lighter and his chest fills.  He places his hand to his chest and feels his heart going double-time, the beat beneath a rock ballad. 

“You’re dating the Grim Reaper?” she yells to her brother.  And Barry grins, full of the shape of her smile and the color red and the melody of a distant violin, slow and steady.

 

 

When Barry and Lup get a place for themselves, the first thing he buys is a piano.

It’s an old piano, made by a company nobody would give five stars or recommend to a rising prodigy.  Half its keys are out of tune, and the pedal hasn’t worked in years.  It’s the type of piano common in out-of-the-way taverns, filled with adventurers and lonely old men.  But Barry loves its musty brown color and the feel of its keys under his fingers, familiar, like the old oak tree in his family’s front yard a hundred lifetimes ago.

He puts the piano in their living room, just beside the windows, and plays in the low light of sunset after returning from reaper training with Kravitz.  He practices songs he knows by heart from the conservatory and new classics from the composers of this world, loud and angry Rachmaninoff and haunting Grieg and exuberant Gershwin.  And he practices the one piece he has never forgotten, the piece that beats in his chest like a second heartbeat.

Lup sits beside him, sometimes.  Her lich form is light on the piano bench, like an inverted shadow or sunlight filtered through stained glass.  She sits beside him and sings her melody, and the two strains of song wind together in a lopsided dance, breathless and half-coordinated, learning again how to fit.

She is always, without fail, unbelievably out of tune.  But Barry doesn’t mind – after all, so is he.

 

 

Barry wakes up, and something is calling him.

It’s a melody – soft and steady, high and haunting, notes flowing into each other like a river running into the ocean.  He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and reaches for his glasses, vision adjusting to the dim light of half-dawn.

And only then does he realize the music is not in his dreams.  It is louder, truer, less perfect.  The melody stumbles through a run, holds a long note too short, goes sharp on the high notes.

Barry swings his legs over the edge of his bed and pads towards the living room.  His bare feet are cold on the wood floor, his sleep jeans hang low on his hips, but he barely notices the chill.

Lup is standing at the window, in a red T-shirt and pale blue shorts, her dark hair hanging to her shoulders and her feet bare.  A violin perches on her shoulder – Barry doesn’t even know where she got a new violin, or when, but there is is, swaying and dipping as she moves.  The light from the window paints her in a soft glow, as though she is a creature of myth or prophecy – but Barry knows she is neither, knows she is as solid as the earth beneath his feet.

He listens as she finishes the piece, fingers stumbling across the bridge and bow tilting too much on the vibrato.  When she turns to look at him, he is already applauding.

“I found your old journal, babe,” she says.  “The one from your – eighth body, I think, the one where you worked as a pianist.  You wrote about dreaming of a beautiful woman playing the violin and feeling sad when you woke up.”

Barry nods.

Lup’s face cracks into a grin.  “I can’t believe you had a crush on me when you didn’t even remember who I was,” she exclaims.  “That’s so embarrassing.”

Barry shrugs.  “Of course I did,” he replies.  “Muscle memory.”

And the grin fades form Lup’s face, replaced by something delicate, something this close to breaking.  Barry knows the glitter in her eyes, the way her stance loosens, guard dropping, strings coming undone.

He takes one step forward, then two, then three, and then he is beside her – wrapping his arms around her, pulling her close and breathing her in.  She’s warm and solid and shaking, shaking, a high sixth chord not quite able to resolve down.

Barry holds on, holds on.  Buries her face in the crook of her neck and hums his part of the song until she is vibrating with that instead, until she is giggling at the tickle of his stubble against her skin.

They stand like that for a long time.  And then they practice until the sun comes up, melodies intertwining hesitantly and then louder, stronger, relearning each other’s curves and rhythms and shaping them with the building golden light.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor) / [tumblr](http://owlinaminor.tumblr.com/)
> 
> also, at time of posting, it is one and a half hours from my birthday, so all comments will double as birthday presents ;)


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